Tuesday, December 16, 2014

In Tom Hanks' iPad App, Typewriters Make Triumphant Return (Ding!)

SEPTEMBER 02, 2014 5:03 PM ET

Tom Hanks' love affair with typewriters began in the 1970s, with his first proper typewriter — a Hermes 2000. Typewriters are "beautiful works of art," he tells NPR's Audie Cornish. "And I've ended up collecting them from every ridiculous source possible."

Hanks admits he started his collection when he had a "little excess cash" but, he points out, it's "better to spend it on $50 typewriters than some of the other things you can blow show-business money on."

The obsession has now resulted in an app called Hanx Writer: For iPad users who are nostalgic for the clickety-clack of keystrokes and "ding!" of the carriage return, Hanx Writer will type and print documents just like an old manual typewriter. The design of the app, which Hanks created with the developer Hitcents, was based on typewriters from Hanks' own collection.

As for whether version 2.0 will have a white-out option? "That would be funny," Hanks says.

Interview Highlights

Three typewriters from Hanks' personal collection were used as inspiration for the design of the new app. "It makes me work a little slower," Hanks says — and that's a good thing.

Anthony Harvey/Getty Images

On differences from modern word processing — such as the function of backspace and delete

On the app, you can't just hold down the button and it deletes line after line. You literally have to do it one at a time: tuk, tuk, tuk, tuk. ... Or you can just not care and just go on with whatever horrible syntax you happen to personally use.

When I use my manual typewriter, I'm merciless with the X-ing out key. And sometimes it's nice ... when you're typing a letter on the app just to maintain that false Luddite sensibility. It's kind of like when you take a video and you add onto it the scratchy 8 mm filter that you can download. ... It's not authentic in any way other than the way it appears.

On how using the app changes the writing process

It makes me work a little slower, and when you work a little slower, you work a little bit more accurately. ... I like operating a little bit slower. Now, the only thing I get from this app is the sound and the speed. What I really, truly miss is the physical trail that typing usually gives you. Typing on an actual typewriter on paper is only a softer version of chiseling words into stone.

I think in a lot of ways much of what ... the app-makers out there are discovering [are] these kind of like backdoor Luddite habits. The amount of cool things you can do with a photographic app now to make it look like anything from a daguerreotype from the 1860s to a Polaroid from 1972 — that gives it a patina. And because you've paid attention to it a little bit more, you haven't just taken a picture and sent it off, that means it becomes some sort of artistic expression.On whether this is a gateway typewriter experience for a new generation

On the trade-offs

If you do want to adhere to a couple of arcane rules in which speed and volume might be sacrificed a little bit — but the advantages that you get of more of a relaxed pace and a specific look to it — to me that's a wonderful trade-off.

Anyone who has spent any time at my cabin knows I have a few nice old type writers. One was the one my mom and dad had when I was growing up, others I have collected along the way. I have a really nice one that folds up.
Not only are Tom and I near the same age, it seems we both like at least one sort of old thing.
So. . . if any of you know Tom, pass on this info to him and maybe we can get together for a beer or somethin'.

OPINION

I Am TOM. I Like to TYPE. Hear That?

Ángel Franco/The New York Times

A mid-1960’s Groma Kolibri portable typewriter at Gramercy Office Equipment on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, where Tom Hanks is a customer.

By TOM HANKS

BECAUSE Mike McAlary started reporting on cops for the New York tabloids in 1985, Nora Ephron’s play “Lucky Guy,” which recently completed its run, featured word processors on the newsroom desks rather than typewriters. Too bad. We in the ensemble would have loved to pound on bulky desk-crowding typewriters for the sound alone.Well, I would have, as I am well versed in the focus-stealing racket one can make with a vintage manual typewriter. I use a manual typewriter — and the United States Postal Service — almost every day. My snail-mail letters and thank-you notes, office memos and to-do lists, and rough — and I mean very rough — drafts of story pages are messy things, but the creating of them satisfies me like few other daily tasks.

Keeping score at a baseball game with a typewriter is not only possible but is also a much more detailed record of the match. (ORTEGA. Full count! Fouled back three in a row ... OH, THAT BALL’S LANDIN’ WHERE THE FANS ARE STANDIN’!!! Walk. Off. Home. Run. Thanks for your attendance and drive safely.)

I confess that when real work has to be done — documents with requirements equal to a college term paper — I use a computer. The start and stop of writing begs for the fluidity of modern technology, and who doesn’t love choosing a new font like Franklin Gothic Medium, Bernard MT Condensed or Plantagenet Cherokee?

For less important doodles in text, the kind that go no farther than your desk or refrigerator door, the tactile pleasure of typing old school is incomparable to what you get from a de rigueur laptop. Computer keyboards make a mousy tappy tap tappy tap like ones you hear in a Starbucks — work may be getting done but it sounds cozy and small, like knitting needles creating a pair of socks. Everything you type on a typewriter sounds grand, the words forming in mini-explosions of SHOOK SHOOK SHOOK. A thank-you note resonates with the same heft as a literary masterpiece.

The sound of typing is one reason to own a vintage manual typewriter — alas, there are only three reasons, and none of them are ease or speed. In addition to sound, there is the sheer physical pleasure of typing; it feels just as good as it sounds, the muscles in your hands control the volume and cadence of the aural assault so that the room echoes with the staccato beat of your synapses.

You can choose the typewriter to match your sound signature.

Remingtons from the 1930s go THICK THICK. Midcentury Royals sound like a voice repeating the word CHALK. CHALK. CHALK CHALK. Even the typewriters made for the dawning jet age (small enough to fit on the fold-down trays of the first 707s), like the Smith Corona Skyriter and the design masterpieces by Olivetti, go FITT FITT FITT like bullets from James Bond’s silenced Walther PPK. Composing on a Groma, exported to the West from a Communist country that no longer exists, is the sound of work, hard work. Close your eyes as you touch-type and you are a blacksmith shaping sentences hot out of the forge of your mind.

Try this experiment: on your laptop, type out the opening line of “Moby Dick” and it sounds like callmeishmael. Now do the same on a 1950's Olympia (need one? I’ve got a couple) and behold: CALL! ME! ISHMAEL! Use your iPad to make a to-do list and no one would even notice, not that anyone should. But type it on an old Triumph, Voss or Cole Steel and the world will know you have an agenda: LUGGAGE TAGS! EXTENSION CORDS! CALL EMMA!

You will need to make space for a typewriter and surrender the easy luxury of the DELETE key, but what you sacrifice in accuracy will be made up in panache. Don’t bother with correcting tape, white-out or erasable onionskin paper. There is no shame in type-overs or XXXXXXiing out a word so mistyped that spell-check could not decipher it. Such blemishes will become the personality of your typing equal to the legibility, or lack thereof, of your penmanship.

The physicality of typing engenders the third reason to write with a relic of yesteryear: permanence. Short of chiseled words in stone, few handmade items last longer than a typed letter, for the ink is physically stamped into the very fibers of the paper, not layered onto the surface as with a laser-printed document or the status-setting IBM Selectric — the machine that made the manual typewriter obsolete. Hit the letter Y on an East German Erika typewriter — careful now, it’s where the Z key is on an English language keyboard because German uses the Z more often — and a hammer strikes an ink-stained ribbon, pressing the dye into the paper where it will be visible for perpetuity unless you paint it over or burn the page.

No one throws away typewritten letters, because they are pieces of graphic art with a singularity equal to your fingerprints, for no two manual typewriters print precisely the same. E-mails disappear from all but the servers of Google and the N.S.A. No one on the planet has yet to save an Evite. But pull out a 1960s Brother De Luxe 895, roll in a sheet of paper and peck out, “That party was a rocker! Thanks for keeping us dancin’ till quarter to three,” and 300 years from now that thank-you note may exist in the collection of an aficionado who treasures it the same as a bill of sale from 1776 for one dozen well-made casks from Ye Olde Ale Shoppe.

The machine, too, may last as long as the rocks of Stonehenge. Typewriters are dense things made of steel and were engineered to take a beating, which they do. My dad’s Underwood, bought used just after the war for his single year at U.S.C., had some keys so worn out by his punishing fingers that they were misshapen and blank. The S key was a mere nib. I sent it to a shop for what was meant to be only a cleaning, but it came back with all the keys replaced. So long, Dad, and curse you, industrious typewriter service person.

STILL, I have the machine and it works, as do most of the typewriters that take up space in my office, home, storage facility and trunk of my car, a collection that started when, in 1978, the proprietor of a Cleveland business machine shop refused to service my mostly plastic typewriter. “A worthless toy!” the man yelled. Yes, yelled. He pointed to shelves full of his refurbished typewriters — already decades old yet all in perfect working order. A typewriter was a machine, he yelled, which could be dropped from an airplane and still work! He gave me a deal on a Hermes 2000 (“The Cadillac of typewriters!”), which featured a knob that adjusted the tension on the keys and the crispest, straightest line of type possible. I’ve since added the 3000, the Baby and the gloriously named Hermes Rocket to my shelves. Cadillacs, every one!

There is no reason to own hundreds of old typewriters other than the sin of misguided avarice (guilty!). Most can be had for 50 bucks unless, say, Hemingway or Woody Allen typed on them. Just one will last generations — if it is cleaned and oiled every once in a while. The ribbons are easy to find on eBay. Even some typewriters made as late as the 1970's can be passed on to your grandkids or encased in the garage until the next millennium, when an archaeologist could dig them up, hose them down and dip them in oil. A ribbon can be re-inked in the year 3013 and a typed letter could be sent off that very day, provided the typewriter hasn’t outlived the production of paper.

Monday, December 15, 2014

It is very well written.
I like a book that is written about people who are well versed on books, and can talk as such.
The characters are very well written and the dialog suits the story.
And I picked up a few other book ideas from the narrative also that I would like to read.
You ended up caring about the folks in the story.

Monday, December 8, 2014

Many years ago, before 1940, there use to be three tiny villages in St Charles County Mo., Howell, Hamburg and Toonerville.
Then Hitler tried to take over Europe and Japan ran amok in the Pacific.
And TNT was needed for the war effort and a location close to St Louis was needed that also had access to rail lines and roads.
The property was found just across the Missouri River from St Louis County.
But three tiny villages stood in the way.
But what the government needed, wasn't to be denied.
Smarter people than I have argued the waste in the destruction. And I am sure people in the government could argue that it was necessary.
The were many families displaced, and homes lost and businesses closed down. Communities that most people in St Charles County now aren't even aware existed. Some of the homes were small and simple. Many large and would now be considered historical. Many log structures were lost.
The whole story of the area can be found here, The TNT Story.

For all the destruction of homes, there was some good to come out of it. To the people that lost their homes, I am sure it is not enough.
I am one of the many people who have benefited from the TNT Story. Although it must be said I would have loved to have seen these old buildings.

Once the War Department was done with the property much of it was sold to the University of Missouri as a research area for agriculture. And in the end, it all ended up in the hands of the very capable Missouri Conservation Dept. Thankfully private developers never had the chance to acquire this wonderful land.

While the University owned the property the local St. Charles County Boy Scouts were able to use much of the land for camp sites and activities. This is how I came to know the area.
Our troop spent many weekends camping in the area. And later on I would hike and explore most of the area that was once these villages.

On the property the scouts were able to use set a beautiful old building we called 'The Lodge'.
Large and built of stone, for most of the year it was home to the man who looked after the area for the scouts. His job was to mow and generally keep the place up for camping and hiking. Over the years he spent a lot of his own money making the place better by building camping shelters and keeping the swimming hole deep and usable. (It included a long wood bridge with a great swinging rope.)

I knew little about the history of the building other than we were told it was officers quarters when the army owned the property. It is with reading the TNT Story that I found the rest of the history.

In 1980 I did a painting of the old lodge. It was soon to be torn down. A few of us tried to save it, but it was not meant to be. It would have been almost 80 years old now.
I first started experiencing the place in about 1965. It would have only been about 26 years old by then. It already seemed older than that.

Here is the painting I did just a few years before it came down.

Although it mostly served as the residence of the caretaker, it also had two bunk rooms that each slept about eight boys (and sometimes girl scouts, but not at the same time!). The three windows on the left would have been the front bunk room. The three to the right of the front door would have been the caretakers work shop.

The center room where the raised roof is was above a large main living room with a very large fire- place. The ceiling was so high (How high was it?) that during winter outings at the lodge we could set a trampoline up inside and never have to worry about hitting our heads.

Another bunk room was also on the left, but at the back of the building.

This small building at the left in the painting was the water pump house and shower.

This next building on the right in the painting was a summer sleeping porch that the caretaker built above the old stone cellar and gas shed.

When I stayed down and helped the caretaker for a week or so one summer I slept in the summer porch. And to show how things stick in ones mind; It was the week Louis Armstrong died in 1971.

(I know where I was when Elvis and JFK died also.)

Us unknowing Scouts always believed the please was built for officers involved with the TNT plant. Although we were wrong, it was partly true.

The following are photos from the TNT Story of how the place looked before the government got it, and a little about the history of it.

"The home was nearly new in 1940. . " So the TNT Story goes. It was built by an executive for Brown Shoe Company of St Louis. The original owner was a William Kaut.

Above is the same view as the painting, approximately. Imagine having this almost new home taken away from you for what the government thought was an important reason.

This next photo is a back and side view, also showing in the foreground the pump house. A really good view of the high center ceiling and the location of the fireplace in that room.

The next picture is the cave like cellar that the summer sleeping porch was built above. (On the hillside above the old cellar the care-taker had built a zip-line that ran down the hill and across the road and a small creek before stopping on another hillside.)

Also on the property was this caretakers house, which we used as a bunk house for the scouts . .

The next photo is of this long building which was a barn and stable. In our scouting days it was a bunk house and workshop. It was across the creek near the swimming hole.

Here is what the Kaut's said of the place when trying not to lose it;"In testimony in United States Circuit Court in 1942, William
Kaut described this property as follows: "[It was] a park, not a
farm. We worked that [acreage] for seven years to put it in shape.
The residence was a ranch type house of logs, ten rooms, air-conditioned, had
three baths, very fine baths; lavatory and toilet off the game room; slab floor
all . . . a ten-room house. Also a barn one hundred feet long and
twenty-seven feet wide. It was all rock. The water-works there was
also a rock building, with built-in laundry and shower, and also an underground
room 14 by 16 for storage, with a two thousand gallon oil tank and filling station
and water pipe."

Although the buildings survived the war, and served as an Officers Club (which seems really unfair to me). . . .

. . .it was eventually taken down in the early 80's when the Missouri Conservation Dept. took over the property.

Very little of the land lost in these three villages was actually used by the War Dept.

The TNT plant, although large, was never very near to many of the buildings. I guess the government wanted a large secure zone around the plant

149 families were moved. The plant did not even last till the end of the war, closing in Jan. 1944.

.

I tried to find a purpose for the building for the conservation Dept. but they thought the need and expense made it impossible. I disagree.

Many of the people who lost their homes were paid very little, and some took a long time to be paid. I doubt if any ever had the chance to get the land back. Why none of the homes couldn't have served as homes for people at the plant I don't know. But some of the photos on the TNT site show nice active communities. A way of life was lost.

Go to the site TNT Story and look at the homes and villages lost. It is sad.

Although lost to these families it was a great benefit for many years to local Boy Scouts. And it now serves as protected land for wildlife and nature. So, you see, it's not all bad news.

I have the swimming hole swinging rope and several other items saved before the building was taken down. And many good memories.

But still, was it necessary.

Additional comments from the buy out:

Large payments to individual landowners included $42,288 to Mr. and Mrs. William Kaut for their 74 acres, assessed at $5000. Kaut is general superintendent for the Brown Shoe Company. Kaut, who was ill yesterday, could not comment but his son, William Kaut Jr., said there were extensive improvements on the grounds including a nine-room stone house with four baths.

And;

Quickly Agrees TNT No Place for Home

Living near an explosives plant is nothing new to William Kaut, general superintendent of the Brown Shoe Company here, but he thinks so little of the idea that he was among the first to agree with the War Department option-buyers on the price at which he would yield his new St. Charles County home to the proposed TNT plant.

Built three years ago as a “home for the rest of my life,” Kaut’s 75-acre tract contains a stone 10-room residence, a barn and a cottage. The grounds have been carefully landscaped.

Twenty years ago Kaut had his first experience with powder plant explosions when he lived in Carthage, Mo. Twelve miles away was the Hercules Powder plant, which he said blew up several times without extensive near-by damage.

“While they didn’t hurt my place, I don’t have any desire to live near another explosives plant,” he said. “I have already signed an option to sell my property to the government for the St. Charles County plant. There’s no other way out of it and I believe all landowners affected would do better to work with the government on the job than against.”

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Just read today that several WWII reunions have either held their last reunion or plan on this year being their last.
The survivors of the Arizona in Pearl Harbor will hold there last one this Dec. 7th.
Only seven of the remaining nine will make it this year and organizers feel it is becoming a hardship for the last few. Several plan on returning on their own as long as they can, but it will no longer be an official event. Here is there story.

While this year will be the final one for the survivors of the Arizona, the 5th Armored Division and survivors of the Doolittle Raid have already held theirs.

The generation that served in WW2 will be sourly missed.

Out of about 16 million Americans who served in WW2 only about 1 million remain.